Diary of an Arcade Employee

RoboCop: The Animated Series – The Full Moon Review!

**One monster’s continuing mission to explore strange new (old) cartoons. Shows he has never seen! Watched in small segments and reviewed immediately. No research! No rewinds! No shame! Join me as I embarrass myself for your reading pleasure. This is Full Moon Reviews!**

My earliest memories of Robocop were probably the same as everyone else’s…the movie. It fit the mold of pretty much all of the other blockbuster 80’s action movies in that it was as weird as it was bloody. I remember that I really liked Robocop…I wasn’t crazy into the movie or looking for merchandise or anything, I just liked it. In fact, I don’t actually even remember any merchandise for the film though I would be willing to bet that a lot of my fellow retro fans could easily prove me wrong.

Though I didn’t have any Robocop sheets or toys myself, “Robocop Fever” must have been spreading through my fellow kids like wildfire. So much so that someone decided that the nation needed a Robocop cartoon! It must have been interesting to be a writer given the task of adapting the hyper-violent story of an undead cyborg cop in his gritty and gory war against the vicious Red Foreman in dystopian Detroit. It must not have been a huge success since I’ve seen bootleg DVD’s at a couple of comic conventions.

Seeing those DVDs is the single only experience I have ever had with the cartoon. I’ve not seen a single episode. I will also not look up any information in this review, so if after the first segment I predict something like “I bet Robocop dies at the end” and he actually ends up going bowling… you’ll know why.

Ladies and Gentleman! Robocop: the Animated Series: Episode 11

Wow. Part one was some pretty exciting stuff! All the normal police apparently still hate Robocop. The bad guys are pretty laughable; we’ve got a crazy scientist who has built a new stop-motion robot thing to kill Robocop (I think he might actually be the Red Foreman character) and an even eviler bad guy who bullies him and steals the robot, with the help of a ridiculous goon (named…Hope Crusher) who looks like a turn-of-the-century circus strongman.

Robocop and his female (less-robotic) partner are for some reason bodyguards at a high level peace talk between the world’s most generic Middle Eastern diplomats (one of whom sounds exactly like Bowser from the Mario Bros cartoon). The talks succeed in about 3 minutes (just like real life) but get broken up by the big robot. We then get a pretty sweet wrestling match/laser gun shootout, which breaks a bunch of stuff and results in RC getting hurt. Robocop gets repaired by a sexy bespectacled scientist lady but, get this, all his systems aren’t back online yet! That crazy cyborg decides to head out anyway. On top of all this, one of the offensive Arabic stereotypes has been mercilessly hitting on RC’s partner! I predict some sweet romance and wacky Inspector Gadget style hi-jinks, kids!

Haha! I just want to point out a moment in part two where Robocop is going to go break in to Red Foreman’s secret laboratory. He walks up to the gate and walks through while saying out loud “The guard is missing. That is probable cause.” No search warrant needed! That must have been for all those constitutional-minded 8 year old viewers!

This segment is non-stop action! After the bungling human cops get done running around embarrassing themselves, Robocop immediately blows up the main bad robot (the scientist labeled the weak spot in the armor on the blue prints) and then he goes looking for Red. After he breaks into the lab compound (totally legally!) the baddies let out not one but two more robots! Robocop gets the crap beaten out of him for a while.

Foreman seems to be pulling one of those “side-with-the-good-guy-against-a-common-enemy” thing now and helps RC beat the bots. Mean while, Robocop beats up all over Hope Crusher The Astounding! The main bad guy escapes to go after Prince Something-or-other. The horrible stupid mean cops let the assassin right into the room but luckily he stands there holding a gun on his victim for about 20 minutes before shooting. Robocop saves the day and the two diplomats pledge that from now on everything is perfect forever! Finally the prince makes his move on Lucy. He asks her to marry him which she is clearly leaning towards accepting till she figures out it’s a harem. Oh well, back to being a cop!

All in all this was pretty entertaining stuff. I probably would have been a weekly viewer when I was a kid. Interesting to have the bumbling robot-ist cops, playing up the whole “enemy on your side” angle. Little note in the end credits- Executive Story Editor: Stan Lee…I knew I recognized all those clichés from somewhere. The guy who I keep assuming is Red Foreman is a strange cat. He always wears sunglasses and seems to have metal hands. It makes me wonder if maybe he was Robocop-ized at some point. If so, he didn’t seem to get any weapons or fighting skill since the goons pushed him around like they were elementary school bullies and he was…me in elementary school. Maybe he got the brains to be a scientist instead of a criminal and invent giant robots with super obvious flaws that allowed them to be destroyed with one shot. Oh, the power!

Robocop was clearly jealous throughout the flirting between Lucy and the Prince/diplomat. At the end when the two partners walk away exchanging witty banter, it occured to me that the writers were trying to spark a little romantic tension between the woman and the reanimated dead guy. It all seems much to touchy-necroFeely to me.

Dedicated fan of puppets, horror and classic animation. Fueled by nostalgia and driven to spread my own brand of "truth" to the fandom. Remember playing as a kid and trying to tell a coherent story with totally mismatched, unrelated toys? It's like that....of the mind!

10 thoughts on “RoboCop: The Animated Series – The Full Moon Review!”

I’ve never seen an episode and Robocop is one of my favorite science fiction movies. I’m not a fan of making it for children though. The original film is a very hard R-rated movie and that is part of it’s appeal. That’s why I never really tried to watch this. I don’t even think it aired where I live. Or least at a time when I could watch it.

The same goes for the Rambo cartoon. All four movies are rated R yet there is a cartoon series of it.

I don’t ever remember it airing either. Honestly the first time I ever heard about it was seeing bootlegs at a comic book convention. btw I feel the same way about Highlander the animated series. Highlander with bow staffs, robots and no decapitation. HUH??

This toon was officially released on dvd under the Jetix brand in Region 2. Its a 3 disc set with all 12 episodes. I imported it a few years ago. Shout Factory should get their hands on it and release it in the States. Way back when, it would air super early on Sunday mornings in syndication. I remember catching an episode or two then, but then after a while it just stopped coming on.

Keep these coming, CW! I for one remember seeing these as part of a Marvel block of animated programming. I think it was reruns of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, Bigfoot (The Monster Truck), and Robocop. Possibly Dinoriders were in that mix as well.

@Mizphit I never saw this when it was on tv but i seriously bet that the bootlegs i saw were recorded off of those region two dvds you mentioned.
@Drahken I saw the dvds for the newer slicker robocop for sale at the con too and havent checked that out either. I imaginee it would have the same charm as this one and from what you’re saying I was right. by the way is this “Dr Drahken?”
@Vic thank you for the kind words Vic! I plan on making this a two/ a week thing especially if people like them. It has the added bonus of letting me watch a bunch of weird cartoons I’ve never seen! by the way, I’ve seen pictures of you and you are a dead ringer for hope crusher! …except you might be a little more buff = )